About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BODY WAVE
by Nancy J. Cohen
Kensington, November 2003
285 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0758200692


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Marla Shore is a professional hairstylist and owner of her own salon. Her ex-husband, Stan, asks her to visit him in police lock-up. Stan is an attorney and is the person who pulled her up from depression years ago, but as her husband he wouldn't let her fly on her own so she flew away from him.

Stan's in lock-up because he's been arrested for the murder of his third wife Kim, but he insists he's innocent. Stan came upon her dead body when he went to get breakfast that morning.

Marla wonders why, as an attorney, Stan's asking her, a hairdresser, to try to prove his innocence and at the same time she also wonders what's in it for her. Stan answers her questions by telling her that she was good enough to have helped the cops solve murders before and that he'll sell her the property they jointly own if she clears him. She agrees to help.

To get her started looking in the right direction, Stan points her to Kim's wealthy family. As luck would have it they are looking for a Sunday home care helper for their old granny and Marla decides to get the job. Stan also lets her know that her latest boyfriend, Lieutenant Dalton Vail, is the cop who arrested him and is the one in charge of the case.

In between hair appointments, Marla investigates the murder mostly by talking to the recently-deceased Kim's family, friends, and lovers while she puts off any intimacy with her cop friend. You see, she's not sure she wants to get closer to Dalton, the father of a pre-teen child, even though he's silly in love with her. Luckily, Lieutenant Dalton doesn't see anything wrong with a hairstylist girlfriend investigating his official police murder case and he supports her role in finding out the whole truth.

Playing fast and loose with good investigative techniques, proper police procedures, and the boundaries of good taste (letting an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair roll down a hill and fall out of the chair only to volunteer that a good perm and make-up session will revive her to health) BODY WAVE manages to have its lead solve the case using only a knack for asking questions of anyone who passes close by.

This is the latest in the Bad Hair Day series by Nancy J. Cohen. It's the first I've read of the books and it'll be the last. A good mystery cozy needs likable characters and interesting people to keep the readers happy and willing to overlook any small flaws in the character's crime-solving talent. Marla Shore has an irritating overwhelming sense of self-worth and a glib comment on everyone's state of hair and scalp care. This book left me cold, and by the end I didn't care who killed Kim and I didn't care if Marla escaped from the clutches of the real killers as they confessed and tried to get away. It doesn't bode well when at the end of the story, right in the midst of a violent episode with gunplay, the hurt policeman wants a sexy embrace from Marla. I kind of hoped the killers would revive and finish what they started.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, January 2004

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]